When asked if he regretted being involved, he said: "No, sir, I do not.

"I have never apologised for what we did to Hiroshima and I never will. Our mission was to end the Second World War, simple as that.

"If we had not dropped that bomb, there is no way the Japanese would have surrendered. We would have had to invade the country and the death toll would have been truly unimaginable."

As well as killing tens of thousands, the Hiroshima attack left hundreds of thousands injured. Many were permanently disabled and later generations were affected by congenital illnesses or deformities.

In 2007, after co-operating with a documentary on the bombing called White Light/Black Rain, Mr Van Kirk met Hiroshima survivor Shigeko Sasamori, who had been 13 at the time of the attack.

Theodore 'Dutch' Van Kirk in 1945 at the age of 24, left, and at home in Georgia in 2005 [REX / REX]